Speakers

Andreas König is Head of Global FX at Amundi Asset Management. He joined Amundi Asset Management (previously Pioneer Investments) in 2007 as Senior Portfolio Manager Foreign Exchange and is based in the London office.

Prior to this, Andreas was Head of Foreign Exchange at Amundi's office in Munich, where he was responsible for everything relating to FX, including the dedicated currency fund, currency risk management, currency overlay, currency derivatives and currency forecasts.

Andreas has worked in the investments industry since 1994. Before joining the company in August 2000, he was employed by Commerzbank London as Deputy Head of Global Foreign Exchange Options. Prior to that, he worked in the Frankfurt branch of Commerzbank as Head of currency options (1996-1998). He started his career in 1994 as a Currency Options Trader for Commerz Financial Products GmbH in Frankfurt.

Andreas is a graduate in Business Administration from the University of Applied Sciences, Landshut. He has been a CFA® charter holder since 2003.

Arnab Das is Global Market Strategist at Invesco in the EMEA region, based in London, and a member of Invesco’s Global Thought Leadership team. He helps develop and communicate analysis and insight on the global economy and financial markets across asset classes for clients, media, governments and central banks.

He works with Invesco’s investment teams across disciplines and regions and is a member of Invesco’s Global Investor Forum Advisory Council with a focus on global macro and emerging markets. Arnab’s research interests span economic policy, performance and reform; and economic and financial history.

Arnab joined Invesco in 2015 as Head of EM macro research for Invesco Fixed Income. He began his career in finance in 1992, and has served as Co-head of Economic Research & Strategy at Roubini Global Economics; Co-head of Global Economics & Strategy, Head of Global FX Research, and Head of EM Economics & Strategy at Dresdner Kleinwort; and Head of EEMEA Research at JP Morgan. He has also been a private consultant in global and emerging markets, as well as consulting with Trusted Sources, a specialist EM research boutique.

Arnab’s studies were in macroeconomics, economic history and international political economy. He received an AB from Princeton University in 1986 and completed his postgraduate and doctoral work at the London School of Economics in 1987-1992.

Guy Verberne is Chief Economist and responsible for all macro-economic analysis within PGGM Investment Management - the second largest Dutch pension fund service provider, with currently €175bn under management.

Guy started his career as a policy advisor at the Dutch Ministry of Finance, before moving to the banking industry, where he has worked as a senior fixed income portfolio manager, chief economist and head of strategy.

He has a master's degree in economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam, specializing in monetary economics and finance.

Asif is an experienced FX Algo Trader who has over 15 years of experience in developing  electronic trading platforms. He has a MSc in Artificial Intelligence and has joined BNP Paribas from Citi, where he worked on various initiatives including eFX pricing engines and algorithmic trading. Utilising his experience in artificial intelligence, he has developed and launched Cortex iX (Intelligent eXecution) - a cutting edge FX algorithmic execution platform that has been highly acclaimed by clients and industry experts globally.

Victoria Cumings is the Americas representative of the Global Foreign Exchange Division (GFXD) of the Global Financial Markets Association (GFMA). Since its establishment, the GFXD has grown to 24 members, between them accounting for over 90% of the global FX market, and is represented in Europe, North America and Asia. The GFXD works with key regulators, Central Banks and other interested parties to monitor policy and regulatory developments that could affect the FX markets and seeks to ensure the establishment of harmonised regimes and infrastructure to enable an effective market for all participants.

Victoria is responsible for regulatory issues in the Americas and for a number of global GFXD topics, in areas including capital, margin and clearing. Victoria is also a former attorney and has previously held positions at CLS Bank, HSBC, Davis Polk, and McCullough Robertson.

Elliot Hentov is the Head of Policy and Research in the Official Institutions Group. In this capacity, he is responsible for the development of research and thought leadership as well as providing technical expertise for the group's strategic direction.

He joined SSGA from Standard & Poor's sovereign ratings group where he was a Director and lead analyst for sovereigns and government-related entities in Central, Eastern and Mediterranean Europe. Before that, Elliot served as a political affairs officer at the United Nations headquarters in New York, advising senior officials on political and economic issues in the Middle East and Europe.

Elliot holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University as well as a Master's degree in international affairs from Georgetown University and has authored publications in the New York Times, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, and Washington Quarterly. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum in London.

Ralf Donner is Head of FICC Execution Strategies at Goldman Sachs. He is responsible for the firm’s client FICC algorithmic execution offering, pre- and intra-trade liquidity and transaction cost analytics, and post-trade reporting.

Ralf started his professional career at ABN Amro in 2006 as an FX options quant, followed by 8 years with Morgan Stanley in London and New York, first in model validation of options pricing models and then in quant sales, focusing on systematic FX trading strategies and FX market microstructure. From 2014-2016 he ran Morgan Stanley’s QSI team in New York.

Ralf holds a Masters in Physics and a Doctorate in Theoretical Physics from Oxford University.

Prior to taking responsibility for FX Prime Services, Marcus was responsible for sales across Prime Brokerage, Futures & OTC Clearing and for the OTC Clearing product in EMEA.

Before joining RBS, Marcus spend 17 years at UBS where he held a number of roles in Prime Services, Securities Lending and FX

Manmohan Singh is a Senior Economist with the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC. He writes extensively on topical issues including, monetary policy and central bank balance sheets, financial plumbing,  rehypothecation of collateral, collateral velocity,  shadow banking, deleveraging in financial markets, etc.. He has written a second edition of his book “Collateral and Financial Plumbing” that looks at all the above themes from the lens of financial collateral. Manmohan has led work-shops for the IMF to official sector policy makers on strategic asset allocation and impact of regulations on financial markets.  He holds a PhD and MBA from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. from Allegheny College.

Bac Van Luu is head of currency and fixed income strategy at Russell Investments. He is an investment strategist and economist educated to PhD level with 18 years of multi-asset experience in asset managers, sovereign wealth funds and investment banks.

James is Head of Investments for SSGA Europe Limited and Global Head of Currency. He joined the company in January 2016 as Head of Currency for EMEA. Since January 2019 he has expanded his role to include Head of Investments for Ireland, providing leadership and governance to SSGA investment management activity in Ireland and other EU jurisdictions. As Global Head of Currency he continues to provide strategic leadership to the Currency team from a business, investment and research perspective and is ultimately responsible for all currency strategies.

James has worked in the industry since 1990, predominantly in the management of global fixed income and currency, with a focus on the development and implementation of investment and risk processes. He has worked on or led teams at investment firms including Brevan Howard, Gartmore and County NatWest Investment Management. He advised investment managers and asset owners regarding the development of investment and risk management processes while at ABN AMRO and Lloyds Banks. He also created and implemented a manager of managers product at ABN AMRO and while at Lloyds Bank he was trustee of both a DB and DC pension plan.

James graduated with a first in Engineering Science from Oxford University.

Richard has been at Insight Investment since 2012, and was previously at Pareto Partners

Duncan Wood is the London-based editor-in-chief of Risk.net. He was promoted to the role at the start of 2015, to lead the editorial reorganisation of the website and its print titles. Duncan had been editor of Risk magazine since July 2011. He rejoined Risk as European editor in October 2009, having originally worked for Risk and Asia Risk in London and Hong Kong as a writer and researcher between 1998 and 2000.
In the intervening years, Duncan was news editor for the Oliver Wyman-founded online start-up ERisk.com. He also worked freelance for six years while living in Germany, with his work appearing in Euromoney, Financial News, IFR, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as Risk magazine and its sister titles.
Duncan has written about derivatives and risk throughout his 17-year career in journalism. He is a Neal Awards finalist, and has also won Incisive Media's journalist and editor of the year awards.

Cetin Karakus has two decades of experience in designing and building large scale software systems. Over the last decade, he has worked on design and development of complex derivatives pricing and risk management systems in leading global investment banks and commodity trading houses. Prior to that, he has worked on various large scale systems ranging from VOIP stacks to ERP systems. 

In his current role, he has been running a global portfolio of six solutions engineering teams focused on building cutting-edge
derivatives pricing & risk analytics, exotics trading systems for energy commodities, cloud-based computational grid services, data analytics platform & services for North American energy markets (oil, gas, power, NGLs, emissions), a weather analytics & forecasting platform and Big Data visualization & reporting services.  He works at an intersection of data, analytics and trading with the constantly shifting ground that is global energy markets.

Cetin has a degree in Electrical & Electronics Engineering and enjoys thinking and reading on various fields of humanities